Canada Research Chairs

Synopsis: Professor Michael Worswick is exploring the possibilities of stamping, electromagnetic forming, bending, and hydro-forming of light-weight sheet and tube materials for automotive parts production. In addition, he is investigating in-service performance of automotive body and structural components, in particular focusing on how they would respond if the vehicle crashed. The research is enhancing the competitiveness of Canadian auto manufacturers, improving automobile crash-worthiness, and reducing fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by automobiles.

Synopsis: Professor Amir Khajepour is working to develop and enhance active vehicle stability systems to reduce car crashes and rollovers, which result in thousands of injuries and deaths every year in Canada. Khajepour works on hybrid and electric vehicles to develop more efficient and environmentally friendly vehicles. He is also developing a revolutionary adaptive suspension system that will provide added passenger safety, reduced fuel consumption, solid tire manufacturing opportunities and extra comfort.

Synopsis: Today, miniaturization is a distinctive attribute of a vast array of high technology products, from computers and consumer electronics to medical and automotive devices. Manufacturing these complex products depends on the availability of advanced joining technologies. Professor Norman Zhou work focusses on developing new or improved microjoining processes and on increasing scientific understanding of microjoining. This includes research on topics such as bonding mechanisms and metallurgy, thermal stresses and distortion, and numerical modelling which is of immediate interest to the telecommunications and medical industries.

Synopsis: Dr. Ren's research focuses on developing microfluidic-based Lab-on-a-Chip technology for chemical, biological and biomedical assays through both theoretical and experimental approaches. There are two major directions being carried out in her lab which include droplet-based microfluidics for high throughput analysis and microfluidic platforms for proteomics. In the first direction, her team is investigating fundamental transport phenomena of water-in-oil droplets in microfluidic channel networks using both optical microscopy and on-chip sensors for monitoring. In the second direction, her team is focusing on exploring various combinations of multidimensional separation schemes that can be integrated on a single chip for protein separation towards disease diagnosis.